This is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all
copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place,
London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

The term “Massive IoT” is an apt description of the enormous number of IoT sensors and devices that will be communicating with one another. According to 3GPP specifications, the 5G standard for Massive IoT will support up to 1 million connected devices for every 0.38 square miles (roughly 1 square kilometer). In comparison, 4G LPWA supports 60,680 devices at the same size of coverage—a far cry from what 5G can deliver.

This insight article (second of two part series) analyzes Apple’s external and internal environment that contributed to a patent war against Qualcomm and the potential impact the patent war can have on the smartphone industry.

The path to full 5G adoption is complicated and still evolving. While preliminary 5G standard specifications are expected in 2018, standards development and deployment is expected to reach into 2022 and beyond. Operators, device makers, infrastucture vendors, component and media companies must act now to develop their 5G strategies.

On January 20, 2017 Apple filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm at the Southern District Court of California. In the lawsuit, Apple accused Qualcomm of breach of contract, violation of unfair competition laws and requested judgement on royalty rate it must pay for Qualcomm’s standard essential patents. (SEPs) Since Apple’s initial legal lawsuit, both companies filed additional lawsuits in different jurisdictions and the dispute grew into a full scale patent licensing war.
This article provides summary and analysis of the licensing dispute between Apple Inc. and Qualcomm Inc.

The objective of the article is to examine patent rulings in the past few years that have made major impacts on the smartphone industry in four different regions: United States, Europe, India and China.
In particular, this article will examine the following two aspects of the patent industry that are relevant to the smartphone market:
I. Rulings made on Standard Essential Patent (SEP) royalty rates
II. Recent changes in patent laws for each region